In Russia and Cuba, there were Communist Revolutions. In China, it was a Civil War. There is a difference.
Dictionary.com says a revolution is an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.
A civil war is a war between political factions or regions within the same country.
The United States of America fought a Revolution from 1775 to 1783. The American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865. Both fit the definitions.
PBS.org gets it wrong when it says, “Mao Zedong led China’s Communist revolution in the 1920s and 1930s.”
In fact, many Blogs and Websites get the facts wrong with it comes to China’s civil war.
However, the PBS report clearly shows that in 1923, Sun Yat-sen, known as the father of China’s republic and the leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), allied with the Communist Party (CCP) to strengthen the republic and take China back from the warlords.
Then in 1927, after Sun Yat-sen’s death in 1925, the KMT broke from the CCP shattering the alliance that Sun Yat-sen had formed.
Chiang Kai-shek, the new leader of the KMT, launched a brutal purge to kill all Communists in China.
The CCP had no choice but to fight or be exterminated by Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT. With the support of China’s peasants, the CCP won the civil war in 1949. The US backed the loser.
In fact, both the CCP and the KMT honor Sun Yat-sen as the father of the republic.
In mainland China, the Memorial Hall for Sun Yat-sen is in Guangzhou on the southern slope of Yuexiu Hill and was constructed between 1929 and 1931.
Another memorial hall dedicated to Sun Yat-sen is in Taipei and was completed on May 16, 1972.
So, why do so many call it China’s Communist Revolution when it was a civil war between the KMT and the CCP? Could they be confused?
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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